DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA

Jeanne Sindic

[Jeanne Sindic is a free-lance journalist who likes to travel.]Ed.

Last month I flew on a business trip to Argentina and after a fortnight there, I returned with my head full of tango airs and the warm but queasy feeling that always settles in my stomach after a visit to Latin America.

Argentina is a Third World Latin American country, although some of its leaders maintain that the country long ago paid its dues as a member of the First World club and its population considers itself European with a New World twist. There is a certain amount of truth in this perception. Argentina built a solid economy in the twenties on the basis of wild horses and cattle and then became the purveyor of meat and wheat for the Germans during WWII. Not surprisingly, today Japan and Germany are amongst its main trading partners, together with Brazil and the United States.

Eighty seven percent of the country's population is urban based, one third living in the Port of Buenos Aires, baptized as the Port of Fair Winds by the original Spanish settlers. Today 85% of the people are of white origin, that is, Spanish and Italian, with some Basques, Welsh, English and Ukrainians thrown in, whereas the remaining 15% are mestizos or Native Americans. Spanish is the official language, although Italian is also widely spoken, as well as some native languages in remote rural areas. There is a distinctive Anglo-Argentine culture in the city and hence going to the Jockey Club to have high tea is not at all far-fetched. There is also a sprinkling of turcos, as people of Arab origin are erroneously known. Outgoing President Carlos Saúl Menem, who has held the post for the last ten years, is one such turco of Syrian origin. It is said that Buenos Aires' flourishing Jewish community of 400,000 together with Middle Easterners exert an influence disproportionate to their numbers. During my short visit, I was unable to form an impression one way or another, but I did hear that Menem had an airstrip built in his private holiday home capable of handling wide-bodied aircraft. Its source of funding and economic justification have been widely challenged by the newspapers, as was his reluctance to look into the fatal helicopter crash that killed his son years ago, a reluctance that moved his ex-wife to accuse him of complicity with the enemy, in this case, the government. Menem recently admitted that there might have been foul play involved.

When I was young, my image of Argentineans was shaped by the facetious formula for becoming a millionaire: to buy an Argentinean for what he was worth and to sell him for what he thought he was worth. I imagined there was a lot of worthless chaff in that saying, but like all sayings, it contained at least a grain of truth. My trip to Argentina gave me the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff, a very natural occupation in a country which is a major wheat exporter. I was very pleasantly surprised when I landed in one of the several airports that the city boasts. I found porteños, as the inhabitants of the port are known, to be a well educated, polite and friendly lot, many of them with the golden good looks one would expect of Californians in a more innocent age. As far as my business was concerned, I will only say that it was conducted in a very efficient and gracious manner, not surprising since it took place in a five-star hotel under the aegis of a powerful patron.

But all that glitters is not gold. Or silver, I should say, for Argentina, as its name suggests, originally attracted the Spaniards for its silver ore. An Argentinean peso that trades at par with the US dollar in a country with 15% unemployment and ever-growing shanty towns and crime, is certainly not a formula for becoming a millionaire, at least for those who are not already rich or powerful. Muggings are rampant, downtown cops wear bullet-proof vests and there appear to be locksmiths in every other street corner in the city. So the winds do not blow fair, or at least, fairly, in different parts of Buenos Aires. The city I was able to cover on foot has shopping centers that would put Ogilvy's and Holt Renfrew to shame. Its blocks of turn-of-the-century upscale apartments make Montreal's golden mile look like a modest proposition. Its harbor-side condos, with ground-floor gourmet restaurants and Alpha Romeo showrooms would make Montreal developers turn green with envy. The city I saw while perched on a tourist bus was quite something else. From my high vantage point I could see shantytowns discretely hidden behind concrete fences.

This is the silver plated face of Buenos Aires. The copper under the plate is the Boca district, where Genoese immigrants settled down and eked out a living as factory hands or stevedores. Some of the streets appear as derelict as the car cemetery next to them, whereas El Caminito, the inspiration for the tango with the same name, is now a brightly colored lane selling itself as the real thing to bored tourists. But the Boca Juniors football stadium is the real thing and one can easily imagine Maradona kicking his first ball there. A real player's shirt can cost up to two hundred dollars.

The tango was born in this neighborhood and others like it. There are still many tango clubs where aged singers belt out doleful melodies and young and lithe dancers show off their prowess. There are also huge tango barns filled with loadfuls of tourist buses watching superb dancers and listening to great music from which the soul has been burnt out by the glare of the reflectors. At least, I imagine that is the way it happens, because I decided to skip that part of the tourist circuit. And there is tango in the streets, tango of all sorts, played, danced or sung by young and old, buskers and wannabes. And there are people like the porteño who walked to work early in the morning belting out a tango as if he didn't care who heard him. I heard him and I cared, admiring his true porteño spirit. You say tango and you say Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzola. Gardel's songs represent the arrabales or fringes, whereas Piazzola's intricate and classical arrangements appeal to listeners of Radio Canada, which often broadcasts his music. Tango belongs to Buenos Aires, whereas folk music is rural-based and linked to indigenous peoples. Atahualpa Yupanqui and Mercedes Sosa are the best known names.

While I was there, I missed a Mercedes Sosa concert, but the TV screen showed a plaza plastered with people singing along with her. Atahualpa Yupanqui was not part of the urban sound-scape, but how could it, since Yupanqui's music sings the praises of a rural and indigenous way of life which is disappearing with the horse-cart.

My only taste of rural life was a day trip to a hacienda where I washed down my vegetarian scruples with Argentinean wine and ate a churrasco, which turned out to be the kind of tender and tasty steak any New York steakhouse would die for. And of course, there was a joust for gauchos, as Argentine cowboys are known. One of these gauchos quickly rode through a portal from which rings were strung, plucked one and rode towards me, gallantly bent over and presented me the ring, together with a very Latin American kiss on the cheek. By the way, Argentineans are very demonstrative and will kiss you even after a short acquaintance. This holds true for the men, too, who are not too macho to regularly kiss their male acquaintances.

Speaking of restaurants, there were many downtown and they were all excellent, especially the service. Food is served European style, but portions are proportionate to the Pampas, the vast flatlands that are characteristic of Argentina's landscape. You can't get a cup of coffee without getting a complimentary glass of sparkling water, a chocolate or biscuit and perhaps a glass of orange juice thrown in. I actually had a coffee in a McDonalds, but it was a McDonalds with a difference, with a real espresso machine and service at your table. But I couldn't help wondering how many people actually patronized these restaurants. Certainly not the very old lady dressed in black who sat in a heap in the middle of a pedestrian street silently holding out her hand. I reached deep into my pocket for her, but not for others who were begging, since my fear of pickpockets often overrode my compassion.

My mind turned from pickpockets to politicians. Newspapers and TV programs are full of tales of corruption. A well-known politician is often quoted as having said the following of human rights: "Yes, we are very human and very right," a play on words made all the more absurd considering that the word derecho or right, also means straight or honest. Another politician on the campaign circuit explained his enormous wealth as the result of his being able to save by not smoking and wearing the same suits for a couple of years. Anyone who can save millions on a modest government salary is certainly a financial wizard.

La Casa Rosada, or the pink house, as the executive office is known, is located in Plaza de Mayo, the main city square. This is where Menem heads in his chopper from his own residence in the suburbs, which boasts an olympic sized swimming pool, a golf course and its own private park, the whole lot a gift from some magnate who stipulated that the mansion would revert back to him if no president used it as his residence. I was wondering why the pink house looked like the backdrop of an Italian opera, until I realized that the whole facade was actually a trompe l'oeil painting, with balconies and balustrades delicately delineated in gray. Our guide explained that Menem spent millions of dollars on that huge canvas to cover the palace while it was under repairs, because he did not want tourists to get the wrong impression.

It was Thursday afternoon and the mothers of Plaza de Mayo, with their heads covered with white kerchiefs, were going round and round the fountain, as they have been doing for the last 22 years, demanding that somebody answer for their sons death. Several of them held a banner stating that they wanted no money in exchange for their silence. What they wanted were answers. A few tourists joined them in their silent march. Others took it as a wonderful photo opportunity. I merely sat on a bench, for once not minding that I had forgotten to bring my camera along, for I could see the pain etched on those women's faces even with my eyes shut. And what shocked me was the explanation given to us by our young tourist guide, fresh out of school: "Nobody knows why or how 30,000 people disappeared, but the reasons were not political." I concluded that the Dirty War was not part of the school curriculum when this young woman (the same age as the children of desaparecidos who had been piously adopted by their parents' murderers into their own Christian families) went to school. Our guide knew very little about the recent history of her country, but was quite enthusiastic about Evita Peron, an enthusiasm apparently shared by many visitors, since there is a tourist circuit devoted to the landmarks of her life. The headquarters of the Evita Peron Foundation used to be housed in a building which is now the engineering school, and which British writer Gerald Durrell once described as "a cross between the Parthenon and the Reichstag". In fact, there are many buildings which respond to that description, grandeur being a thing in Buenos Aires. There is the 9 de Julio Avenue, the city's main drag, reputed to be the widest street in the world. I do not buy that description but I would certainly describe it as the most difficult street to cross. A string of city blocks were knocked down to widen the avenue and it has several parallel streets, the two main ones with eight lanes each. So if you want to cross the street, you have to do it in stages, three traffic lights being enough if you are quick and sure footed. The Teatro Colon, of course, is truly grand, built along the same lines as La Scala of Milan; it has several basement workshops where sets are built: thousands of costumes are housed in its huge underground museum.

Being quick and sure footed is an apt metaphor for life in Buenos Aires. It is said that people survive by running from one job to another or by mortgaging their future for an evening out in town. One of my business counterparts invited several of us to dinner at her house. She lived downtown in a gracious old building decorated to look more expensive than it most probably was. A maid in a black uniform and a handmade lace apron kept filling our glasses with French champagne, while another maid took care of the kitchen. Several of the guests were of British origin and spoke with a veddy plummy accent. The conversation drifted to the British Raj and one of the guests expressed her disbelief that anyone would have wanted to fight the British, unless they hated them or were communists. And another business colleague, whose husband was into trade and was most probably not invited for that reason, had previously announced that she had nothing against slavery, provided slaves were treated well. I appreciated my hostess' graciousness, but couldn't help wondering how she managed on a salary presumably equivalent to my own.

So this is the Argentina I got to know as well as one can know a country in a brief fortnight. It is not part of the Latin America I know and love so well because it lacks the pre-Columbian component which adds another dimension to the cultural and political life of a country. It is, however, a lovely land, rich in resources and with a well-educated population base. It even has its own falls, Iguazú Falls, which stretch over 4 kilometers of wild jungle and are not marred by the tacky motels that spoil Niagara Falls.

It is also a land of survivors whose self-confidence is perhaps a necessary ingredient for the daily struggles of life. Outgoing President Menem broke the inflationary spiral that has always characterized Argentinean economy by reducing the public sector and privatizing inefficient state corporations. He has also restricted labor union activities and has pegged the peso to the US dollar. But he has also produced tremendous unemployment. President elect Fernando De la Rua has already announced that Menem's fiscal policies will remain unchanged. He has also adamantly refused to have 98 military and civilian war criminals extradited to Spain at the request of Judge Baltasar Garzón. It looks like the incoming government will retain the expensive trompe l'oeil that casts a rosy hue on the activities of the Chief Executive. But life will go on because it has to. It might take two to tango, but it will certainly take several generations to undo the harm caused by long years of military dictatorships.

Don't cry for me Argentina . . . for we will cry with you as we hold hands with the mothers in the Plaza de Mayo, who are still waiting for answers to their questions.

THE END

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